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Pastimes : Investment Chat Board Lawsuits -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: EL KABONG!!! who wrote (804)	9/24/2000 6:40:29 AM
From: EL KABONG!!!	Respond to of 12465

Well, after composing myself, and having had a few minutes to reflect upon the prior story, I have a comment and a fictitious story... To start with, has anyone ever heard of a more innovative use of duct tape? I thought I'd heard them all, but will admit that this is a new use. Now for the "story". Seems as though the man with the cat as a supplementary appendage, via some indiscreet use of duct tape, is in a morning meeting with the Japanese Minister of Foreign Business Development. The Minister enters the room and our man stands up. The story would be very short were our man not wearing trousers, so let's assume he's properly attired. As he reaches across the table to shake hands with the Minister, the poor foreigner, who is allergic to cats, begins to sneeze uncontrollably. The cat, stuffed neatly into a pair of men's bikini briefs, begins to meow rather loudly. Between "Bless You's", the Minister notices a rather large bulge in our man's trousers that seems to be wildly thrashing about. The Minister casts a cautionary eye towards the bulge. Not wanting to be too conspicuous, our man quickly resumes a seated position, but not before accidentally banging the poor feline's head against the edge of the table. Now thoroughly enraged, and in a bit of pain as well, the cat begins to shriek quite loudly, loud enough that people down the hallway in their little cubicles can hear the commotion. The Japanese Minister now has a look of sheer panic on his face, and furtively glances around the room noting all of the available exits. Whiskers begins to claw his/her way to freedom by clawing anything that dangles within easy reach of his/her little kitty feet. Now it is our man who lets out a blood-curdling shriek. The Minister, making the Sign of the Cross with his hands, bolts for the nearest door, noting copious amounts of blood running down our man's trousers and staining the floor. At this point the duct tape is shredded, and Whiskers slides down a convenient and available trouser leg and bounds down the hallway to freedom, in front of the entire office staff who have all left their cubicles to witness the incident. There has to be a moral to every fictitious story, but I can't think of a good one. My apologies to the plaintiffs for making light of the situation, but I really do find the whole thing very funny. I can't for the life of me imagine anyone taking the defendant seriously. Perhaps libel and defamation laws are radically different in Canada than they are in the USA. KJC Disclaimer: The story you read above was completely fictitious. Any resemblance to any person(s), living or dead, wherever they may have resided is purely coincidental.

To: EL KABONG!!! who wrote (804)	10/9/2000 1:12:12 AM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Respond to of 12465

Re: 10/4/00 - [CSC.V/CGE.V] Minews: Whiskers the Cat Causes Problems on a Bulletin Board Features WHISKERS THE CAT CAUSES PROBLEMS ON A BULLETIN BOARD. Bulletin boards on web sites attract oddballs like moths to a flame. For the first time in their rather sad lives they can publish an opinion anonymously and then sit back and see how others of a similar bent react. Not many weeks ago a bullboard hero made contact with Minews to know if we would support his campaign to stop De Beers making a bid for a Canadian diamond explorer in which he claimed to be a shareholder. It was pointed out to him that De Beers had never stated that it had any intention so to do, but that if it did he might make quite a lot of money. No more was heard. Now the whole thing has moved on a step with a couple of Canadian mining companies, suing Stockhouse because of some rude comments made about their directors on its bulletin boards. In fact they have gone the whole hog, apparently, and filed a defamation suit using a top firm of lawyers in Vancouver, DuMoulin & Boskovich. Doubtless the lawyers will be able to explain the difference between a person publishing rude comments on a bullboard chat site and another who paints something similar in rather bigger letters on the side of a building. If the company which provides the space, i.e. chat site or wall, is responsible for what appears on it the law is swiftly going to make an ass of itself. The big problem Mr Clive Boulton, the lawyer at DuMoulin & Boskovitch, will have is to keep a straight face throughout the proceedings. The allegations made against some of the directors in the companies range from them "liking boys and hookers" to "viewing child porn sites" and goes on to claim that one of them " will be shaving the family cat and then play hide-the-sausage with Whiskers". Nor is that the last.. The last goes too far even for Minews and involves tying the poor, long suffering cat with tape to the end of a certain part of the male anatomy in order to enlarge it. Cats are not the first animals one expects to be mentioned in such contexts simply because they have claws which could cause considerable damage to sensitive parts of the human body. Whether Stockhouse will use this basic fact as evidence that the writer was clearly off his trolley is a matter for them, but that is the essence of the matter. Presumably the company directors who take such exception to these rude comments expect their wives, children, bank managers and business associates to be searching the bulletin boards daily for comment about them. The lawyers' suit states that "As a result of these false, malicious and defamatory comments made by the defendant of the plaintiffs, , the plaintiffs have suffered damages and are unable to cope with the scurrilous, scandalous and false statements made about them." "Poor dears, how sensitive they are" would seem an appropriate comment. So they go and spend something like a quarter of a million Canadian dollars on a lawyer to ensure that details of the case are faxed to offices all over the world to raise a laugh. The heading on the one which reached Minews was " (Name of Company) Yowls over Whiskers and the Sausage" and it ends by saying "Whiskers was not a party to the suit and Mr Boulton was not immediately available to discuss Whiskers' role in the matter". Back to mining, boys. You have given us a good laugh but the joke will be over for your shareholders when the legal bills start rolling in. 4 October 2000 minesite.com

To: EL KABONG!!! who wrote (804)	2/27/2001 3:20:31 AM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12465

Re: 2/26/01 - [CSC/CGE] Stockwatch: WAAAAHH! WAAAAHH! by Brent Mudry A month after declaring itself the victim of the reprehensible cruelty of a mystery Internet poster, Great Canadian Gaming has now revealed the identity of its anonymous detractor, and confirms the culprit behind the nasty comments is not Whiskers, the well known Stockhouse BullBoards kitty. In a statement of claim filed Monday in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Great Canadian fingers Alec Rossa of Victoria as the author of unflattering comments about the company's executives on Stockhouse. The suit, filed by Vancouver lawyer John Douglas Shields of Shields Harney, replaces the "John Doe" suit launched on Jan. 22. The allegations have not yet been proven in court and no statement of defence has yet been filed. While nasty and derogatory comments are as prevalent as boosterish touts on stock chat-site postings, and disregarded by most serious investors, Great Canadian is greatly upset about a Jan. 17 comment by the Stockhouse poster. While chat-site postings were recently dismissed as just bathroom-wall graffiti by the outgoing head of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Arthur Levitt, Great Canadian has gone running off to get its day in court with Mr. Rossa. "I heard that one of the big boys was cheating on his wife and now she wants half or all of his shares. That's the problem plus we should fire them all if they were in Vegas they could be bankrupt now!" states the Stockhouse BullBoard posting, as reprinted in the lawsuit. In the suit, Mr. Shields claims that that in their ordinary and natural meaning, Mr. Rossa's words mean that Great Canadian "permits immoral acts, is in financial difficulty, and is bankrupt or insolvent." Great Canadian claims it has been seriously injured in its character, credit and reputation as a result of the Stockhouse posting. In addition to unspecified general damages, Great Canadian also seeks punitive damages, as John Doe's words were "harsh, vindictive, reprehensible and malicious." The suit claims the text of the posting is so extreme that it is deserving of "full condemnation and punishment." Great Canadian also bases its punitive-damages claim on the "malice" and "cruelty" of the Stockhouse poster, and the fact that the posting may have been read by investors and potential investors. While Great Canadian is nothing short of anguished over Mr. Rossa's allegation of wife-cheating, another company listed on the Canadian Venture Exchange, Consolidated Topper Gold Corp. was the target of even more amusing allegations from another Stockhouse BullBoards poster. The Consolidated Topper suit features a shaved cat called Whiskers, a length of duct tape and a rather unusual method of enhancing the male anatomy. Unfortunately, a trial date has not yet been set for either suit. (Readers wishing more details of the Whiskers sausage suit may refer to a Street Wire dated Sept. 20, 2000, under the symbol CSC.) (c) Copyright 2001 Canjex Publishing Ltd. stockwatch.com